


The Hummingbird Is The Only Animal Capable of Backward Flight

by NoHolds



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemon Separation, F/F, Pre-Recall, Slipstream - Freeform, The power of friendship, daemon AU, judicious use of pseudo-science, uh some hospital stuff so if that wigs you out you might wanna skip this one, way more angst than i usually have in a fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 13:04:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14770166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoHolds/pseuds/NoHolds
Summary: "Angela wonders, when she cuts Lena open, if she will find the collarbone has fused in the centre. If she will find that Lena's sternum extends down the front of her ribs, if she will find flight muscle, breastbone.She finds only, of course, the red & vital inside of a human body, opening under her hands as she has seen a hundred times before.First, do no harm, Angela thinks, as she makes her first cut."Or, "Lena recovers after the Slipstream Incident, but this time there are daemons. Angela feels really very guilty about it all"





	1. Angela

**Author's Note:**

> Technically bats can also fly backward but "hummingbirds are the only birds capable of backward flight" didnt sound as good. I am sorry for lying to you about animals.
> 
> (You don't need to have read the HDM books to follow the plot of this one (I actually probably play sorta fast & loose w daemon canon). Here's a crash course if you want it:  
> A daemon is an outward reflection of a person's soul- people usually can't survive without their daemon, & vise-versa. In childhood, daemons can shift form, but during puberty, they settle as the animal that best represents their person. Touching another person's daemon is a horrible taboo. It's considered rude for daemons to speak w/ other people. That should be it!)

“Winston!” Angela scrambles to her feet, Tiressais lofting briefly into flight with the movement. “You’re back early- have you found her, then?”

The doors of the clinic slide shut with a pneumatic _hiss_ , and Winston pauses just inside  to adjust his glasses. The white clinic lights wash him out ghostly. Bring harsh, tired shadows out under his eyes.

“Doesn’t look good,” Tiressais says, lighting back onto Angela’s shoulder.

Angela shushes him, but one look at Winston’s face and she gets the sense he’s right. She half wants to sag back into her chair, all her energy deserting her at once. Like a drain’s been cranked open. Those relentlessly bright lights, overhead, wash Angela’s hands out bone-white, when she looks down at them.

She hears Winston approach- the soft leathery sound of his knuckles on the tile. “We found her,” he says, in his low way, and Angela’s head snaps up.

“You did? Is she-”

“She’s alive.” Winston looks away. “But there’s something- else.”

Tiressais flicks an antenna. “What?” he says, and Winston looks up at him. Sighs, loud, through his nose.

“You’d- better come see for yourselves.”

* * *

Cadet Oxton- “Tracer”- has been missing for a month. Her aircraft, the Slipstream, landed on autopilot, not a scratch on it, but neither Lena or her Daemon had been anywhere to be seen.

* * *

And it’s such a shame, really, because Angela had only met them once, Lena and Wright, but there had been something about them. Some of that bright spark of promise that Overwatch attracts (that Overwatch swallows up, she thinks. That Overwatch eats whole).

She’d conducted Lena’s entrance exam. Angela remembers:

The door to her clinic opening, halfway, and a head poking through the crack. Spiky hair, freckles; still young, something unformed about the eyes. “ ‘Scuse me!” the head had called, her voice cheery, a little too loud. “They said to come right in?”

Angela closed her book- some pulp thriller Jack had brought back from an airport. “Lena Oxton?”

“That’s me!” Lena pushed the door open the rest of the way. There was a blur of colour by her ear that took a moment to resolve itself as a hummingbird- greenish, with a vibrant shock of blue-purple at his throat. “Should I- come back later?”

Tiresais opened his wings, where he was sitting on Angela’s desk. He didn’t often get the chance to be _bigger_ than other daemons. Angela ran a knuckle down his back. “No- no, by all means.” Angela gestured to the exam table; wax paper, vinyl mattress. Overwatch may have been an overfunded, multinational military group, but doctor’s offices are the same everywhere.

Lena grinned, hopped up onto the mattress. Her feet didn’t quite touch the ground. She bounced her heels against the table, looked around at the Health & Safety posters, the jars of tongue depressors. “So!” She’d said. “Whats the procedure, doc? You gonna check me for lice, or what?”

Her daemon was in constant movement as she spoke; a flash of iridescence in the bland white clinic. Angela laughed. “That will not be necessary.”. Tiresais, at her wrist, flicked his antennae, amused.

And that was it- Angela’s first, her only, impression of the young Cadet, before the accident. A shock of noise and colour, of _life_ , in a drab place. Her unrefined laugh, easy smile, the bright flicker of her daemon in the fluorescent light.

* * *

The Lena that Winston leads her to, today, is-

They have her in a spartan hospital room: no posters, except one reminding staff to wash their hands. There’s not even a TV in the corner; just a cot and a picture window letting in the summer sun.

Lena’s sitting on the edge of the bed, looking down at her feet. Not moving in the slightest. Angela doesn’t see her daemon. Tiressais gives an uneasy shudder, on her shoulder. “I can’t sense him,” he says, and Winston nods. Shuts the door behind them.

“Neither can I.”

Lena hasn’t looked up at them, yet.

“But he’s not dead.” Winston knuckles forward to stand beside Angela. “They aren’t severed. It isn’t- that.”

Angela sighs. Runs a hand back through her hair. “That is- certainly good news,” she says. “But if not that-” She steps closer to the bed. There’s something strange about the light in the room, she thinks, about the thin, early-summer sun coming through the windows. It makes Lena look faded, somehow. Washed out.

“Cadet?” Angela says. Notices, finally, Lena’s daemon nestled in the sheets. He’s not moving- his tiny chest doesn’t seem to lift with breath.

Lena looks up. She’s unharmed; still in her pilot’s uniform, strangely, but there’s no visible damage. She gives Angela this little smile. All wrung-out. Nothing so bright and cheery as Angela remembers.

She opens her mouth. Moves her lips, but no sound comes out. Angela turns back around to look at Winston.

“What’s-”

“I’m not sure,” he says. “Her daemon is in some sort of… hibernation. But as far as the Cadet herself…”

Angela looks back. Notices that Lena’s fingers don’t dent the bedsheets, where she’s gripping the mattress. That she isn’t casting a shadow.

Then, before her eyes, Lena’s whole body  _flickers_ , like a bad cable signal, like the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stroke of a hummingbird’s wing. Her eyes go wide- panicked, that expressive face all twisted up with fear.

Lena shouts, or- tries to, but she doesn’t make a sound. Reaches a hand for Angela, but before she makes contact she winks out of existence- just disappears. There’s only Wright left behind, the bright slash of his feathers against the hospital sheets, his tiny body deathly still. Angela looks over at Winston, bile rising in her throat. Her hand reaches, unbidden, to her shoulder, for the comforting brush of Tiressais’s touch.

“Winston,” she says, around her nausea. “What _was_ that?”

* * *

It’s all Angela can think about that night- how _scared_ Lena had looked. How she’d reached out, had called out, for _something_ , before she’d vanished.

Angela has seen people die. has seen people frightened. Has seen the red and failing insides of people’s bodies as they slipped away. But this...

This, she doesn’t quite know how to deal with.

* * *

Angela reads the accident report, the next morning. She's sitting at her desk, steam curling softly from her mug. the morning sun is warm across her shoulders. It is some horrible parody of gentleness, with the neat print in front of her detailing the ripping-apart of a young woman’s life.

Some element of the Slipstream’s design was overlooked, the report says. Lena was caught up in the teleportation, instead of her plane. Ripped out of time like a fish being reeled up on a line.

Angela notes the passive voice.

 _Cadet Oxton was put at unnecessary risk_ , the report says. No subject. As if these things happen on their own.

The Cadet “was put at risk”

Angela thinks, _by who?_

* * *

“How did this happen?”

Winston shuffles from foot to foot. The unflinchingly bright lights of his workshop beat down over both of them. “I sent you the incident report,” he says.

Tiressais flicks a wing. “Not what we mean.”

Angela is always startled when Tiressais treats Winston as what he is- as a daemon. She forgets, sometimes.

Winston sighs. “How much do you know about Slipstream?”

“I am a _medical_ doctor,” Angela says. “I only- I know _of_ Slipstream.”

“I know,” Winston says. Turns back to his workbench, some unparsable machine parts delicate between his enormous hands. “But the basics-”

“An experimental aircraft.” Angela rubs at her temple, wishes she’d grabbed a coffee on the way over. “Capable of teleportation?”

Winston nods. “The teleportation had- hmm. Unforeseen side effects. Cadet Oxton became-” he pauses, tinkers a moment. Angela watches him strip the rubber off wires, pliers dwarfed by his fingers. “Untethered, from our timeline.”

It’s more or less what the report had said, but Angela feels fresh nausea at having it explained, here, in the very same workshop she’s come to for card games, for friendly dinners. Lena’s bizarre science-fiction ailment laid out here with the jars of peanut butter and half-finished garage kits.

“She’s a ghost,” Winston says. “In effect."

Angela takes a breath. "And- will she stay this way? As a-" she can't quite bring herself to say  _ghost_. Angela isn't a skeptic, as such- is working, herself, on technology to bring people back from the dead. But calling a patient a ghost- it seems a bridge too far. 

Winston frowns. "We're not sure. The only thing keeping her here- er. _Now_ , as the case may be-”

Angela nods.

“Well. Wright is relatively stable, chronologically speaking. The working theory is that he was far enough away that the malfunction didn’t affect him the way it did the Cadet. Their connection is what’s stopping Oxton from-” Winston makes a vague hand gesture that Angela interprets as _getting untethered from our timeline and flickering out of existence, like apparently can happen to people, like Overwatch apparently has done to someone._

She takes a seat. Digs her fingers into the tops of her thighs. Thinks about Lena’s daemon alone in the centre of that hospital bed, Lena lost somewhere in time.

“And this connection,” Angela says. Information about her patient- that’s something useful. She can _do_ something, with that. “It’s stable?”

Winston wags his head side-to-side. “For now,” he says. _For now_.

Tiressais alights on Angela’s hand. “Not our fault,” he says, low, and she nods. Strokes a fingertip down his back. When she looks up again, Winston is watching her carefully.

Angela takes a steadying breath. “So. What can we do?”

* * *

Lena is where Angela left her- at least, most of her is. The sun coming through the windows is dim, watery, and it slices right through Lena, like she’s little more than dust, suspended on the air.

Angela looks at the shadow Lena is not casting and thinks of those old, analog photos. Lens flares or sunspots mistaken for ghosts, flaws held up as proof of something supernatural, something more.

Angela’s morning coffee goes abruptly acid in her stomach, heartburn bitter at the back of her mouth. She smooths down the front of her shirt. Sits neatly in the room’s only chair, scrubs a black scuff-mark out of the tile and only then looks up.

Lena has been watching Angela this whole time. She flickers, once, at the edges, like a bit of paper caught in a breeze. Gives Angela a little smile like, _hey, what are you gonna do?_ But her fingers have tightened where they’re resting on the edge of the bed.

Or, they would have. Instead, the tips of Lena’s fingers phase through the mattress like clipping textures in a video game. Angela would laugh, except the rest of it is too real. Urgently real. The grainy quality of the light filtering through the curtains, the neutral hospital decor. The vaguely Texas-shaped chip in the beige wall-paint that Angela sees when she looks away, unable to meet Lena’s eyes.

“Angela.” Tiressais chides, from his perch on her knee. Angela sighs.

“Lena,” she says, looking back towards the bed. “Can you hear me?”

Lena's mouth moves around a sentence- silent- and then she scowls. Nods.

“You- may have realized that we can’t hear _you_?”

Lena nods, again.

Angela gives her the best attempt at a smile she has, right now. “I would like to start by telling you that our chief scientist, Winston, is currently working day and night to- resolve your situation.”

Lena smiles. Gives a _thumbs up_ that startles Angela into laughing. Lena laughs, too- silent, of course, but her shoulders shake, and her mouth slants up to one side.

“I’m Dr. Angela Ziegler- you may remember from your intake exam?”

Lena nods.

“And this is Tiressais. We will be watching over you until you recover, if that’s acceptable to you?”

Lena nods. Frowns. Makes this wide gesture, encompassing.

“Is there- a problem with the room?”

Lena shakes her head.

“The base?”

Another head shake- _no_. Lena frowns. Makes a circle with her finger and thumb.

“Zero?”

Lena gives Angela a, _really?_ Look, and Angela laughs. “Very well- “o”?”

Lena mimes a ‘t’ next. A clumsy, lowercase ‘h’, an ‘e’.

“Other?” Angela guesses, and Lena’s expressive face breaks into a grin.

It’s- strange. Playing at charades with a ghost, in a room barren of decoration except for a notice reminding staff to wash their hands. Next, Lena gestures to herself, and Angela’s heart sinks.

“Others like you? No- you’re the only one I know of in your- condition.”

But Lena’s shaking her head, and from Angela’s knee, Tiressais pipes up- “other patients?”

Lena looks at him, startled, and Tiressais flicks an antenna in apology. They- that is, Angela and him- they neither of them can help themselves, sometimes, when they’ve solved a tricky problem. Polite or not.

“You’re- worried about my other patients?”

When Lena nods, there’s this sinking feeling in Angela’s gut, familiar in a way the rest of this case isn’t.

She’s stitched back together- or, sometimes, failed to stitch back together- so many heroes. So _many_ people like Lena, with the unfinished fat of youth in their cheeks, with blood in their teeth and hair and their knuckles all white with pain. Begging, even as Angela was desperately pouring life back into them, to go help their friend, instead, _he needs it more, I can hold on, I’m okay_ -

It never gets easier. Or- it does. But it never gets _easy_. There is always this; the lurch of rage, the sudden taste of metal in Angela’s mouth at this stupid, tragic bravery, iterated many times.

“My other patients are being looked after by my college- a doctor O’Deorain.” Angela's voice a practiced, doctor’s even. Tiressais vents for her, lighting off to circle over her head. “You needn't worry for them, Lena; they are in good hands. Just focus on your own recovery.”

Lena nods, some tension going out of her shoulders, but the next moment she’s stiff all over again, like she’s bracing for a blow, and Angela’s seen this too, enough times. A soldier gritting their teeth before a bone is set.

The next moment Lena is gone, again. Guttered out like a candle in a breeze, and Angela is left with the beige walls and the empty room and the rage burning a hole through every bit of vital tissue she possesses, just eating her up from the inside.

* * *

Angela’s patients _are_ in good hands, with Moira, and- Angela hadn’t been precisely _lying_ , when she’d told Lena she didn’t have to worry, only…

Early in their careers together, Moira and Angela had collaborated on a report on Winston’s health. Angela because she was technically his doctor, and Moira, because her Enos had hands and thumbs that Tiressais just didn’t. Could touch Winston, aid in the check-up, in ways Angela and Tiressais couldn’t.

(what _were_ the rules, with someone like Winston? Was it still taboo to touch someone’s daemon if that someone wasn’t around anymore? There wasn’t precedent, there just _wasn’t_ , for a case like his).

In any case- Moira and Enos are clever. Good doctors, great scientists, but there was some- strange _hunger_ in them, when it came to Winston. Angela remembers, during one of those first checkups:

Moira had been testing Winston’s eyes, shining a light first into one and then the other. Winston, glasses held delicate in one ham-sized fist, had given Angela a beseeching, _get me out of here_ look, face all creased up with exaggerated discomfort.

For a half-tonne gorilla, he was an _awful_ baby when it came to his health.

Angela had turned, to hide the smile at his complaining, and seen Enos perched behind her on a surgical cart, close enough to raise hairs on Angela’s arms. Close enough to touch by accident, if she’d stepped back without looking.

His eyes were fixed on Winston, pupils blown so hungrily wide they all but swallowed the pale of his iris. His paws kneaded the edge of a surgical tray. The scalpels and needles spread beneath him threw up spots of bright light onto his coat, making him look all silvery- making him look something artificial, something metal-sharp. Something cutting.

Tiresais grew uneasy at Angela’s shoulder, fluttering his wings, and Enos had looked up at them from his perch, tail lashing. He opened his mouth a fraction, like he was scenting the air. Flashed sharp, carnivorous teeth. Tiressais’s discomfort prickled the back of Angela’s neck, this instinctive, animal fear rising in her.

It was only a brief moment. Moira called for Enos to come help her, in checking Winston’s teeth, and he turned,  hopped nimbly from the tray table without so much as disturbing a cotton-swab. Offered his opinion in his high voice, accent like the roll of the tide, his teeth tucked safely back behind his gums.

But still- there was something about how he had been _looking_ at Winston.

“Like he wanted to _dissect_ me, Angela,” Winston would say later, the coarse hair standing up on his shoulders.

Something in his voice had stopped Angela from calling him a complainer, as she usually might. Stopped her from teasing him at all.

* * *

Enos is a crab-eating Macaque. He rides draped across Moira’s shoulders like a shawl, his bright eyes always unnervingly alert. In the lab, he is Moira’s shadow, an extra set of nimble hands, a streak of silver fur and a second clever mind.

In the late twentieth century, Crab-eating Macaques were involved in what was, at the time, the most high-profile Animal Testing case ever brought to court.

Moira would never consider anything of the sort, Angela knows- Enos is her lab partner, her other half, and testing on daemons is a taboo even _Moira_ would not breach.

But still, the implications are-

Unnerving.

She understands, is all. Why Winston, out of all people, prefers to avoid the two of them.

* * *

When Lena comes back, she is bathed in a warm, buttery sunlight, the kind you can nearly taste. It is coming from the east.

The hospital room’s windows face south. It is a gray and cloudy day, outside. Angela wonders when the rest of Lena is, where the sun is so bright. Angela can see- but not hear- Lena’s panting. Her shoulders are heaving with the effort, a faintly sick look on her face.

Wright, at her side, remains as still as can be. He hardly seems to breathe.

“I’ve never,” Tiressais says, for Angela only, “not been able to sense another daemon. I wonder-”

But before he can propose a theory, Lena looks at them. Her eyes are red, but there is a steely, even look on her young face that does not allow Angela to forget she is a soldier. Lena points at Wright, the tight ball he makes curled up on the pillow.

“He’s stable,” Angela assures her. “But, we’re not certain…”

Lena’s hand, where it’s resting on her thigh, balls into a fist. She looks towards the door, pointed.

“We’ll- leave you, then?” Angela says, and at Lena’s nod, they go.

* * *

Angela learns:

Hummingbirds have such high metabolic demands that they will starve to death in their sleep, on cold nights. To prevent this, they have developed the ability to enter a state of near-hypothermic hibernation called torpor, that drastically lowers their energy use.

One of the first biologists to witness this said he couldn’t tell the bird he was studying apart from dead.

* * *

And there is this:

Angela has been a med student and a resident and a scientist and a triage doctor. She has seen, many times, the light go out of someone’s eyes. The split second before the monitor starts telling you they’re dead, that- flicker of life just snuffs out.

Angela has seen a person’s daemon realize this- the death of their other half, has seen countless animal eyes go wide with terror and grief. Has heard mourning and pleading from throats mammalian, avian, reptilian-

She has seen this, iterated many times: the living soul of a person being pulled apart like taffy. The gold of Dust scattering until there is only that startling, empty space at the corpse’s side.

Animals hibernate to wait something out. Wright is waiting his damndest, curled still and deathlike on the white hospital sheets, but if Lena stays- wherever she is, too long, Angela thinks she will see it again.

See the stir of life return to Wright, and then the panic in his beetle-black eyes. He is so small it won’t take long at all, the dissolving. He will turn into a handful of Dust and vanish, and Angela can’t-

No. She _won’t_ watch that happen. Not to him. Won’t watch whatever happens to someone, like Lena, when her last anchor in the present disintegrates.

* * *

Torbjorn’s Ida is a large sort of ant. In the field, she spends her time in a hollow chamber of Torbjorn’s prosthetic arm, safe behind a ½-inch of solid steel.

Tiressais is too big for an insect case. Angela is used to it, mostly, but she walks into Torb and Ida’s workshop- a bright space, huge windows open for ventilation, and Torbjorn in his ratty work clothes at the forge. All that heat and orange light, and Ida safe as houses in her little chamber.

She can’t help but feel a stab of jealousy.

Angela clears her throat, hanging in the doorway. She’s wary of the flying sparks, the wall of furnace-heat. (historically, Angela knows, people with insect Daemons have life expectancies that are, on average, three and a half years shorter than the wider population). She looks at Tiressais, sometimes, when they are in the field; that smell of pulse-munitions in the air, chips of debris flying, the racket of guns, and she thinks, _what am I doing, putting you at this kind of risk?_

“Help you, Angela?” Torbjorn says, peeling a thick, smith’s glove off his remaining hand, tucking it under his belt.

“Cadet Oxton,” Angela says. “You must have heard what’s happened to her?”

This stormy look gathers on Torbjorn’s face. “Damn shoddy work with those Slipstreams,” he starts, and Angela puts up a hand. Not the time for a rant on mechanics.

Torbjorn sighs. Comes away from the forge, towards Angela in the doorway, and unlatches Ida’s chamber so she can scurry up to sit on his shoulder- a mirror of Tiressais on Angela’s.

“Aye,” Torbjorn says. “I heard about the accident.”

(and here is why- here is why Angela wades into battle with her paper-fragile Daemon clinging to her back like a pair of her own personal wings. Like a fatal fucking _kick-me sign_ . Because the two of them have never stood back- have _never_ not helped, where they could. Even if Angela _could_ leave Tiressais behind, he wouldn’t let her. It isn’t who they are).

In the wide mouth of the workshop, Angela strokes a finger down Tiressais’s delicate, bristly back, and meets Torbjorn’s eyes.

“Winston is working on bringing her back,” she says. “Help him. Fix this.”

* * *

The next time Angela sees Lena, she’s pacing in front of her room’s picture windows, her hair sticking up in messy chunks.

Lena waves- a waggle of fingers, goofy, and offers Angela a smile.

“How are you feeling today?”

Lene gives Angela _2 thumbs up_ , her mouth compressed in a thin line.

“Well, I’ll just do a quick check-up and leave you, if you would prefer to be alone?”

Lena shrugs, like she doesn’t care if Angela leaves, but there is a flicker of near-panic on her face.

Angela remembers writing in the file from Lena’s original check-up, _outgoing, mark for team assignments_.

“Or- I can stay, if you’d like to talk?”

Lena shrugs, again, but she really has a very expressive face- a very open one.

Angela ends up taking her lunch with Lena- she’s got no idea what to say, at first. Eventually settles on, “I’ve never encountered cafeteria food that was truly _good_ , but the chili today is particularly-”

She looks down at the grayish mush and frowns. Tiressais flicks an antenna, amused. “Thrilling conversation,” he tells her.

Lena drops to a seat on the floor, back to the window, and looks up at Angela as she eats. Angela does her level-best to fill the still air with conversation- Tiresias chimes in, time and then, when Angela falters.

Lena gives him this startled look, the first time it happens- her naked surprise, alongside her spiked-up hair, gives her the effect of a cartoon character whose stuck its finger in a light-socket.

Tiressais says, “Angela you’re forgetting that old movie theatre-”

And Angela remembers (grateful for the conversation topic), the rundown, 2-theatre cinema in her hometown. The bowling-alley carpets, the snobbish owner who never showed what was just come out, only showed what was ‘good’.

“Ah- yes,” Angela says. “Yes, Mr. Tannis brought me to my love of Carpenter-”

But Lena is looking over at Tiressais like he’s said, “you’re forgetting that time we flew through the sun”, startled, a little disbelieving.

“Oh.” Angela lifts her hand, for Tiressais to clamber over. “Our apologies- I forget that not everyone-”

And Tiressais says, “I don’t see why we’re expected to keep quiet. It’s restrictive, and besides that-”

Lena- wonder of wonders- is _laughing_ , mouth fishhooked up at the corner, her shoulders shaking. She points at Wright and nods.

“Oh- is he… chatty, as well?”

Lena’s grin broadens. She nods, again.

So Angela starts stopping by, and sits, and chats. She knows she’s not the most engaging of conversationalists- especially one sided- but Lena brightens up with the visits. Seems to, anyway.

Angela watches her flicker out five more times, and doesn’t get used to it. A lively, smiling Lena going sheet-white and then going out altogether- just dissapearing, a blip of startling _nothing_ in her wake, like a cable signal in a thunderstorm.

Angela’s always half-convinced that’s going to be it- no more Lena- until she looks and sees the pale green of Wright, on the bed, the flash of his blue throat, like a brooch left nestled on the sheets- still and gemlike.

His feathers- if she isn’t imagining it- are starting to go dull, ragged.

* * *

Angela is leaving Lena’s room one night, at some ungodly hour. She’s started bringing her work to Lena’s room, just to keep her company.

The stiff waiting-room style chair leaves her back aching, and so long hunched over her tablet without a desk leaves pain in her wrists, her shoulders. Angela half feels like a student, again, sore and tired after a day of cramming.

“This wasn’t our fault,” Tiressais says, again, as Angela stands. Her lower back wrenches, protests like some overworked machine. Angela can hear the pop of bone like a worn-out transmission.

“It was Overwatch.” Angela says, trudging down the halls towards her room. “We’re Overwatch.”

“I want to help her just as much as you,” He says. “But hurting yourself isn’t helping her. You need to rest.”

It’s a conversation they’ve had before. Well-trod ground by now.

( _you’re keeping both of us up for nothing,_ Tiressais had snapped, once, as Angela poured herself a coffee some 4-am in med school, a research paper stewing on her computer. It wasn’t due for weeks, but it had got caught between Angela’s teeth and she wouldn’t go to bed until she could figure it through.

Angela had scowled and taken the biggest sip of coffee she could, burnt her mouth badly enough she had canker-sores well past the paper’s deadline.)

This time, Angela- older, less irritable- just sighs. “I know,” she says. Makes a detour to the mess hall. “I only-”

The kitchen lights are already on. Angela pokes her head inside to find Winston standing in front of the open fridge, cold air and blue light wafting out, bathing his fur a sickly gray.

“Winston?” Angela says. He turns.

“Angela!” Winston closes the fridge. “You’re up late.” He looks tired, too, eyes bloodshot.

Angela gives him a look, like, _pot, kettle_. Winston laughs, that deepdown gravel of his voice.

“Want me to put on some tea?”

Angela smiles. “That would be lovely.”

They talk about their progress with Lena- Angela how she’s been trying to keep her better company, Winston how he and Torbjorn have been going.

“We nearly have it,” he says, drawing aimless shapes in some tea that has spilled onto the counter. He is comically large, hunched over on the little kitchen stool like some strange cartoon. “I only hope-”

Angela nods. Lena’s ‘flickers’ have been getting more frequent. Wright is starting to fade, like a picture left too long in the sun, all that brilliant colour draining out of him.

They’re running out of time.


	2. Angela

Winston pages Angela at 2:30 AM, a week later.

“Winston?” She says, groggy one heartbeat and then wide-awake the next, all the emergencies a witching-hour call could entail jolting through her at once. Tiressais is even quicker on the uptake, beating nervous circles above the bed. “Winston, what can I-” Angela scrambles upright, her blankets tangled sweaty around her legs.

“The device,” Winston rumbles. “For Lena- our prototype is done.” His voice drags at the corners, like a too-long scarf.

“That’s- excellent news!” Angela roots across the floor with her feet, till they bump up against her slippers. “Can I help-”

“We want you to speak with Lena- you know her best. Talk her through it. We- think it would be best to make the effort as soon as possible.”

“I’m on my way.”

* * *

Angela’s slippers slap, comically, on the tile floors. She feels faintly absurd in her plaid pajama pants and her too-big T-shirt, commemorating some years-ago half-marathon. Tiressais trails behind her, lofting in flight; he’s too restless to ride on Angela’s shoulders.

Winston’s waiting outside Lena’s room in a rumpled lab coat, a cart full of unparsable machine guts beside him- tangles of wire and chrome that just look HR Geiger to Angela, alien and a little sinister.

“Torbjorn?” Angela asks.

“Asleep.” Winston rubs the back of his neck. Shows huge, yellow teeth when he yawns. “I- thought it best not to wait.”

Angela nods. “In that case,” she says. “Shall we?

Lena looks startled up at them, when they enter. She glances at the clock. Frowns at Angela and taps at her wrist, head cocked.

“I know- apologies for the late hour, Lena, but Winston believes he’s found a- temporary solution to your condition.”

Lena springs upright so comically fast there might be cartoon speed-lines behind her.

“We wanted to brief you on the machine-” She looks to Winston. 

He wheels his cart forward. “Yes.” he clears his throat. “Well. Your- tether to the present appears to be Wright, here.” he gestures Lena’s Daemon, pale green against paler white sheets. “However, we’re afraid your bond may have been- somewhat severed.”

At Lena’s alarmed look, he says, “ _May_ have!” And Angela remembers why he'd asked  _her_ to come along, to help explain. Winston's bedside manner is nearly as bad as Moira's. 

Lena’s hands are drumming anxiously on her thighs. She’s looking straight at Winston- laser focused.

“Uh! But no need to worry.” Winston coughs. “This machine will- er-"

He looks at Angela, as if for help, like she knows anything about time travel.

"Well," says Winston. "It will- enclose you two in a sort of er- chronal net, and should restore your connection entirely. Bringing you back- we hope- to the present. The only problem-”

Lena frowns.

“The the device isn't very- er, portable. You’ll have to stay within it's range- which- well, for now, that ‘safe zone’ will be- give or take a few feet- this room.”

Lena’s shoulders slump. She _does_ look away from Winston, now, stares down at her hands.

Angela steps in. “Would you still like us to proceed?”

Lena nods, _yes, she would_ , and Winston bobs his own head. Reaches for his cart. 

Angela watches Winston assemble his machine with a presice, unhurried patience.  _Lena_   watches him- her eyes follow Winston around the room, hungry-alert.

Angela just feels... itchy, watching Winston nudge a generator an inch to the left, half an inch back- if only she were doing something,  _helping_ in some way, but she lifts some strange, silver-white box and it sets a tingle through her like she’s licked a battery. Tiressais shivers all over, gives her this startled look. She stops trying to help, after that.

Winston looks at Lena, once He's done setting up. He’s holding the disparate halves of one last connector, huge hands dwarfing the delicate mechanism. The ground is thick with wires, like vines on a forest floor, and Lena looks this tangle over before meeting Winston’s eyes. Her fidgeting stills. She gives him a thumbs-up.

The connectors _click_ , audibly, as they come together. A satisfying, mechanical sound. The lights in the room flicker, then stabilize.

Lena, where she’s perched on the edge of her cot, flickers herself.

Then- like a radio signal clarifying, as you drive into range, she solidifies. The bed _creaks_ , at the sudden introduction of her weight. Lena looks down at her hands, locked around the edge of the mattress. She rubs her fingers together, and the sheets crumple under her touch.

She looks up at Angela and Winston, _wonder_ breaking over her face like-

Oh, like the birds coming out, at the start of spring- after so long in the frost- their gaudy colours, the _noise_ of them. Lena says, hoarse, “ _t_ _hank_ you,” and Angela _hears_ her, her bright loud voice, and smiles herself. And then-

Just to the right of Lena’s thigh, Wright stirs. He fluffs out his wings, lifts his head. The iridescence of his throat catches the light, like dragon-scales in extreme miniature, this precious-gem colour, bright sapphire.

He looks up at Lena and makes this high, miserable noise, and Lena gathers him up- bright, peach-pit sized between her palms. Lena is crying- crying openly, and she says, “Wright-” like it’s being yanked out of her, like a tooth being pulled, nearly tortured- “ _Wright_ ,” as she rubs a thumb over the soft feathers of his back, pulls him close to her chest.

He shivers, all over, and Angela hears the high tenor of his voice go, “Lena, _Lena,_ ”

And Angela says, “We should go."

They leave Lena and Wright to their reunion. Angela glances over, at Winston, as the door closes behind them, and sees this yawning, hungry look on his face. This naked, this _desperate_ loneliness.

* * *

Hummingbirds are known for their speed; their frenetic energy. They are cousins to the swift, one of the fastest species of bird on earth. One of the fastest animals on earth, period.

They are also the only bird capable of hovering.

They may _seem_ impossibly, breathlessly fast, but the _real_ trick of the hummingbird is their nearly uncanny ability to stay in place.

* * *

 Angela falls into bed, when she gets back to her room, and then is too restless, too wired, to sleep. The dim ceiling,  overhead, yawns like a hungry mouth.

Angela shoves herself back upright, flicks the lights on.

Tiressais sighs, but when Angela reaches for him, he lights onto her hand without comment. It is an instant comfort, the scant weight of him, the tickle of his feet against her skin.

There had been something  _more_ horrible, about seeing Lena and Wright reunited, than seeing them half-separate as they had been. Angela has never- has never had to _reunite_ , with Tiressais Has hardly considered it. What being apart from him would entail.

They get on each others’ nerves, sometimes- Angela pushing herself too hard, wearing them both out. Tiressais with his vain streak, his chatty pride. But they have never, _ever_ not had each other.

“I’m right here, Angela,” Tiressais says, his ghostly wings folding back into their neat wedge.

“I know,” Angela says. Draws him closer, the soothing, familiar feeling of his prickly feet, his feathery wings. “I know,” she says, again, and feels his misery, his disquiet, where is reverberates between them. “I have you,” she says, and Tiressais flicks one wing open and back shut again. A nervous gesture Angela hasn’t seen in some time, as if he’s trying to shed water from his back.

“I know,” he says, a echo of her. They stay like that for a long while, Tiressais tucked as close and tight to Angela as he can be, without being crushed.

* * *

 In the next week, Angela is by every morning for a check-up. They want to be sure that Lena is stable, that her connection with Wright is as firm as it should be.

Angela pauses to watch them in the door, the fourth day- Lena and Wright are talking, inaudible to Angela, Lena sitting with her legs dangling over the edge of her bed and Wright nestled neatly in her hands.

Lena says something that makes him dart into the air, an indignant blur of grey-green feathers hovering an inch from Lena's nose. She laughs- this delighted full body laugh, mouth flashing wide open, and Wright flits circles around her head, a tiny spot of gaudy colour.

It is an ongoing shock how small they both of them are- like a rock in Angela's shoe, something she can't quite ignore or forget about.

Not that she thinks Lena is someone who needs special condescension, protection. She is a soldier. A brilliant, prodigal pilot. It is only Angela looks at them, Wright and Lena, and feels that anger all over again, that lit in her chest when her parents died and never quite went out. _Must we keep doing this?_ She thinks, _feeding such bright young people into the furnace of war?_

Tiressais flutters his papery wings; a daemon as unsuited for battle as they come, but second maybe is frugivorous Wright, his abject lack of claw, of tooth, of talon, his beak not even strong enough to crush _seeds_. Lena and him- they weren't made to kill people. Weren't built for it.

"It's their choice," Tiressais chides Angela, and it is, she knows, only...

Lena looks up at Angela, lingering in the doorway, and grins so wide Angela sees her molars. Her hair, freshly washed, is shockingly thick and straight, getting in her eyes. Lena blows at a stray lock, and Angela remembers her flickering out of time like a bit of paper caught on the wind.

She returns Lena's smile- maybe a bit stiffly. Steps in through the door. "Good morning, Cadet. how are you feeling?"

Lena nods. "Loads better, doc. Pass my thanks on to the big guy-" she frowns- "uh, Wilson?"

"Winston." Angela smiles. "I'm sure he'd be happy to talk to you himself."

Lena nods, and Wright lights on her shoulder, his long beak moving close to her ear. "I can't ask that," Lena tells him, all undertone. "Have you lost _all_ your manners?"

"I don't mean to eavesdrop," Angela says (Tiressais snorts, says in an undertone, “ _yes, you did, you’re so nosy-”_ ). "But I'm sure we'd be happy to answer any questions you have- polite or otherwise."

Lena laughs. It's not quite so convincing as her laugh had been, before.

"Uh- well then. Winston. Uh, is he-." Lena looks over at Wright. He blinks at her. "I mean, I saw some things that weren't- that weren't really, there, while I was taking my little-” Her mouth hooks up at one corner, making light. “Tour through spacetime."

Tiressais rustles his wings, and Angela feels the edges of his curiosity bump up against her own- _what did you see_ , he wants to ask. _Where, when, did you see it? How_?

 _Who’s nosy now?_  she wants to say.

Instead, Angela just nods. "And, you want to know if Winston is-"

"I mean," Lena says. "He's a gorilla?"

Angela laughs. "Yes. He is."

Lena's shoulders relax, and Wright says something into her ear. She shakes her head. "Yeah, you told me so." She looks up, at Angela. "Good to know I've not completely lost it, then! I'd've thought he was your daemon, you know, but then you've got-"

Tiressais gathers himself up as big and huffy as he can manage. "As  _i_ _f_. A gorilla-"

Lena laughs. "No offense meant! I'm sure you're better off as a butterfly."

"A moth," Angela corrects her, because her daemon's already talked to this girl, more than once, it's no harm to identify him further. No more a breech in propriety. 

Lena smiles. "Well. Pleased to meet you both. Er- again."

Angela smiles. Tiresias opens his wings, flashes the deep, handsome blue of their undersides, the preening creature he is.

It happens over and over through the first weeks of Lena’s recovery- that anger. Now that Angela’s less worried Lena’s going to dissolve like sugar in a cup of tea, she’s just- she’s _mad._ Like:

Angela puts her stethoscope to Lena's back, one day, listens to the even beat of her heart, the steady push of her lungs.  Lena takes a deep breath, skin going tight over the bellows of her ribs, the faint lines of her muscles.

Her skin is smooth and unmarked but for the knobs of her spine, no wrinkles or spots of age; a young person's skin. Angela is once again suddenly, blindingly angry for Lena. That she enlisted at 16. That, prodigal pilot she was, she was jerked back through time before getting very much of it herself, that she has been a ghost for months, that Overwatch put her in the cockpit at all, this girl with soft, downy hair on her spine, with a daemon that weighs less than a nickel.

Tiressais flutters his wings, agitated in echo of her. Wipes at his antennae with a foreleg.

"Everything alright, doc?" Lena says. There is an edge of nerves to her voice. Of course there is. Wright puffs out his throat, bright feathers glinting in the neutral lighting- something precious about him, the sapphire colour of his head, the silver of his back. He is more jewelry than bird, Angela almost thinks, almost. There is a tiny bald spot, on his one shoulder, where he’s molting out the feathers gone ratty with his hibernation.

"Yes," Angela tells them. "Just fine." She pulls the cold of the stethoscope from Lena’s back, and Lena tugs her shirt back down. “And how about you- is there anything more I can do for you?”

Lena sighs. Twists around to face Angela. “I-” she scrubs her hands down the tops of her thighs. Flashes Angela a bright, full smile. “I’m alright, doc.”

“Cadet-” Angela says. “I am your doctor. You can tell me if you need anything- in fact, I wish that you _would_ tell me.”

Lena pauses. “I would- _kill_ to go get a cup of coffee,” she says.

“I can bring you-”

“No,” Lena says. “I mean- Y’know,  _leave_ and go get one" She’s staring past Angela’s shoulder, towards the door. Her hands are drumming on her thighs, Wright hovering at her ear. "It's- never mind, you know! Just dyin' to stretch the old legs, is all. Nothin' to worry about!"

“I’m very sorry,” Angela says, guilt and nausea clawing their twin ways up her throat. “Winston is working on a more mobile anchor for you, but-”

“I know.” Lena shakes herself, like a dog shaking off water. Flashes Angela a smile. “Forget I said anything!” Wright rubs his head against her jaw, where Lena’s got her head tipped down to one side.

"-As you were, then, Cadet."

* * *

It is-

It’s not Lena in  _particular._

It is only that Angela has always seen too much of the human in everyone to think war a very good idea. Lena is not an exceptional case. She is only the latest and most tragic proof of something Angela’s thought since she was eleven years old, daemon newly settled, staring at a police officer’s shiny-black shoes as he explained very gingerly how one violent act had torn Angela’s parents away forever, _forever_.

* * *

She brings Lena a coffee, anyway, the next time they see each other, and Lena gives it this long look, the corner of her jaw going a little white with tension. “Thanks,” she says, and Wright flicks into the air to hover level with Angela’s eyes.

“Sorry ‘bout her,” he says, his accent a piping, soprano mirror of Lena’s, and for some reason this is a little jarring, a little startling, to hear from his tiny body. “We _are_ grateful, really! _Someone_ ’s just a little hungry- she gets cranky, wouldn’t you know it?”

“You bloody-” Lena puts the coffee aside to lunge to her feet and grab at Wright, and he darts laughingly out of the way, blurring briefly and then resolving just out of her reach.

Angela sees, then. Begins to see. Lena can laugh a _lot_ off, but when she can’t stomach it any more, Wright is there to do it for her. And who could accuse them of taking anything too seriously, with Lena’s loud cheery voice and her faintly undignified daemon, laughing and teasing in the face of danger, obnoxious, unafraid. Who could ever call either of _them_ cowards? _Water off a duck’s back, doc!_

* * *

Still. Angela visits Winston, in his workshop, the next day. The usual mess on Winston’s workbenches have overflowed across the floor, like some untamed and overgrown garden plot, sprouting weeds of wire and gears.

Angela picks her way around a heap of white metal, all forged in variations of the same shape and apparently scrapped, judging by their new role as an end table. Angela picks an apple from the top of the heap, takes a satisfying bite. 

“Winston,” She calls, and Winston’s broad back, hunched over his workbench, straightens. He turns, and Angela sees his glasses are pushed crooked, his leathery face a bit creased. He’d been asleep at his desk.

“Angela,” he says, voice muffled around a yawn.

“I can come back another time,” Angela says, but Winston shakes his head.

“No- no. I need to discuss something with you, anyway.”

When Angela gives him a _go on_ gesture, Winston grimaces, flashing sharp canine teeth. “Er- you might want to take a seat,” he says.

Angela clears a stack of diagrams from a chair and sits, gingerly. Tries to swallow down the _I’ve got a bad feeling about this_ that’s pushing at the backs of her teeth.

“I’ve been trying to devise a more- permanent solution to the Cadet’s problem.”

Angela nods, wants to say, _that’s great news_ , only she can hear the ‘but’ at the end of Winston’s sentence.

“And- I think I may have found something. Uh- Torbjorn suggested it, actually, but I’ve been looking for… alternatives.”

“Don’t like the sound of that,” Tiressais says, and Angela shushes him.

“Mhhm.” Winston agrees. “Unfortunately, the only workable option...” he reaches around, lifts a circle of silver metal from his workbench; it’s tea-saucer sized, glass and blue light at the centre. “In order to make the system more portable; well, to compensate for the- the loss of raw power, the anchor will have to be more-” Angela recognizes the ' _how to explain this in a way Angela will understand'_ look on his face. “It will need more... direct access to Lena and Wright’s connection.”

Angela blinks. “Direct... how?”

“Er,” Winston says. Taps the centre of his chest. “Surgically direct.”

Angela looks at the metal disk in Winston’s hands more closely. Thinks about the kind of surgery that could embed something so large in someone so small as Lena, how disruptive. Starts half-unconscious thinking about recovery times, infection risks, best practices.

Seeing the look that must be on Angela’s face, Winston grimaces. “I don’t like it either,” he tells her. “I’ve been thinking my way around it, Angela, but- at least for the time being-”

Angela nods. Feels the queasy guilt give way to resolve, to _th_ _is is something I can do_. “I can do it,” she says. “The surgery. I will ask the Cadet about it.”  Tiressais flicks a wing.

“She’ll say yes,” he tells them. “Make sure this is our only option.”

Winston nods. His thick hands tighten around the rim of his device- the anchor. “It is.”

Tiressais looks at him, then up at Angela. Settles his wings neat across his back. “Then we’ll get it done.”

* * *

Lena turns the anchor over in her hands. The bright, mid-summer sun is bathing her half in brilliant light, and it is an ongoing relief to see her so solid. Present. Wright has gone eerily still, looking down at the device with his dolls’ eyes in precise focus.

“Well,” Lena says, eventually, looking up at Angela. “I always did like those old superhero comics. Fancied myself more an X-Man than an Avenger, but I reckon we can swing Iron Man, hey Wright?”

Wright puffs out his throat, feathers winking. “We’ll make it look good,” he tells her.

All Angela can think is, _Tiressais_ _was right_. These two will agree to _anything_ that’ll get them out of the hospital room. She really, really hopes Winston is right.

“Guess it’s lucky my tits aren’t too big, hey?” Lena laughs, and Wright chirps a reproach. “Nah, I mean- they’d get in the way of something like this!”

Angela laughs, too, uneasy. “I’m- glad you’re comfortable with the procedure,” she says.

Lena shrugs. “How soon can we get this thing done, doc? I’m itching to stretch my superhero legs!” There’s an edge of real- well-hidden, but real- desperation to her voice. Her leg is bouncing. Wright is the only still thing about the two of them, today.

“We’ll need to keep you in observation for another week,” Angela says. “And make sure you are stable enough for surgery. And Winston must double-check his design. But it should be within the month.”

“Oh, good.” Lena grins. “Be out in time for a beach day!” Angela can’t keep her eyes off the surgical-grade steel in Lena’s hands, its cold glint in the warm light.

* * *

Lena has really recovered more quickly than anyone could have wanted. Winston assures Angela that he’s as certain about the anchor as he can be, about a piece of experimental time-controlling hardware. That its as small as it can be, for the purpose it will serve, that there is no way it could be, instead, a watch, a necklace, some bit of removable, of less invasive, kit.

“We may even be able to harness it,” he tells her. “Given certain enhancements, I believe Lena could control-” and Angela cuts him off. She doesn’t need- doesn’t want, maybe, she will cop to that denial- to hear about how this device she is implanting in Lena’s body can be weaponized.

She watches Lena pace her room all hours, watches Wright flutter restless loops over her head. They are like zoo animals, the both of them, locked in too small of a cage, and Angela knows they must be allowed to leave or they’ll hurt themselves, they’ll become intolerably unhappy, unstable, but-

Well, but nothing, in the end. There is nothing else to do, so Angela does nothing else. The surgery goes ahead.

* * *

The surgical machines are not designed for operations like this.

 _First, do no harm,_ they remind her, as she details the shape and size of hole to be cut (Angela notes, in her thoughts, the passive voice. _To be cut by who_?).

In the end it is better- easier- to do it by hand.

Wright is asleep. A tight bundle of feathers on Lena's pillow, he reminds Angela of when Lena had first come in, when he was stock still in the dead centre of that hospital bed.

Angela does not shudder, at the thought- her hands are rock steady. They have to be. On her shoulder, Tiressais shivers for her, a tremor of delicate wings.

Angela looks down at Lena's chest, the square of skin that is not covered over by surgical paper, a stretch from her sharp collarbones to the bottom of her ribs.

Angela wonders, when she cuts Lena open, if she will find the collarbone has fused in the centre, if she will find that Lena's sternum extends down the front of her ribs. If she will find flight muscle, breastbone. Wonders if Lena is hollow, inside, but for honeycomb-struts.

She finds none of this, of course. Only the red inside of a human body, like she has seen hundreds of times, opening under her hands.

 _First, do no harm_ , Angela thinks, as she makes her first cut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this chapter, I just fucking exposit a little bit & i was stressed about it then remembered this is a hobby and im not getting paid so i can just like. have fun with it.   
> concrit welcome, find me on tumblr etc etc  
> Oh also in this fic im prescribing to that old theory that the like 'core' of the chronal accelerator is iron-man style in lena's chest & the bulkier removable harness is what lets her time travel @ will. dont know the origins of that theory but you see it all over the place & so thats what im gong w!


	3. Lena

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this chapter, i am a staunch supporter of the spice girls hologram reunion tour

It’s not that it’s _ugly_ , Lena thinks. She isn’t so vain as all that. And it’s nice to leave the room, finally, even if it’s just to walk down the hall to the cafeteria. And- sure, she’s a little sore, but what surgery _doesn’t_ leave people sore? She’s pretty sure most people who survive plane crashes end up _more_ sore than she is. Angela says it’s a month- six weeks, max- before she can start being really active. Lifting things, going to the practice range, all that. Eight weeks till she can head back to the gym, but- really, Lena’s not a huge fan of the gym, anyway. It’s fine.

“Any excuse not to do pushups,” Wright chirps at her.

“Not like _you’re_ the one doin ‘em,” she grumbles. They’re wandering the halls of the hospital, mostly. Angela's cleared them for ‘light walking’ and surely this qualifies? (if Lena gets a little out of breath after taking the stairs, that can be her and Wright’s secret).

“I get sore when you get sore,” he says. “Isn’t that the worst part?”

“You brat,” Lena says, “the worst part is _doing_ them.”

Wright flicks from her left side to her right- he’s stuck much closer than he usually has, since Slipstream, but Lena can feel-well. They aren’t _severed_. She can feel him there, the flicker of his emotions; where he is, what he’s doing. But.

She remembers- foggy, like everything from when she was in-between, she remembers Winston saying ‘partially severed’. And there’s maybe- not a distance, but an elasticity. It scares the shit out of her. This new stretching in the link between her and Wright, like it has come partway unspooled, somehow.

As if to make up for this, Wright ranges less far than he ever did, before. Sticks close by her ears, so Lena can feel the faint wind coming off him, hear the namesake-hum of his wingbeats.

She remembers that profound, that horrible relief, at gathering him up in her hands after first coming back. A feeling like someone'd filled her up past the brim, this cramped affection, this total-body ache eased only where Wright was nested in her hands, eased only by his high, fluting voice crying out her name, over and over.

It’s not something she cares to feel again. Their bond is not something she cares ever to test.

* * *

Of course, fate has its ways of conspiring against you.

Lena skids into an elevator at the last moment before the doors ding shut, shoves hair out of her face. Her chest pulls, painful, when she pants, and Lena winces at what Dr. Zeigler would say.

There’s someone already in the elevator- not the doctor, thank God. A tall woman; dark skin and long, dark hair, this should-be-silly sniper’s beret perched on her head.

“Hi!” Lena gives her a wave, still a little out of breath. The woman’s daemon- this huge, sleek hyena- gives Lena a level look, something very keen in her eyes. They’re Career Soldier all through, the both of them; straight backs and this eerie, predator's still.

“Hello.” The sniper is giving Lena a Look, too, same as her daemon. Sideways. Considering.

Lena thinks maybe it’s gotten around, who she is. And- well, who wouldn’t be a little curious about a time traveler? Not like the sniper has to _oogle_ though. It’s a bit rude, really. Back in London strangers just _ignored_ each other in public.

Lena has this throb of homesickness, suddenly- not for the unfriendly Londoners, exactly, but for _London_ , in a deep and inarticulate way, like she hasn’t felt in a long while. She looks to Wright, to confer, and realizes he’s not there. She glances up, but knows- _knows_ , now, that he’d not been with her when the doors slid shut. The elevator's been down three floors. There’s nothing like Lena felt when she was a kid, when one or the other of them would wander too far and strain their connection. There’s none of that old, tugging pain, none of that empty-hole feeling.

But no Wright, either- Lena can feel him _there_ , the whisper of his presence, but not what he’s feeling, thinking. She jams the stop for the next floor and takes off running the moment the doors  _ding_  open.

The sniper and her hyena watch her go, through the closing doors.

Lena pulls a stitch in her race up the stairs. She can feel this trickle of blood running down her ribs, but Wright is there, he’s exactly where she left him, circling by the elevator doors and calling for her in his high, nervous voice, and so Lena can't bring herself to care about a little gore. 

Lena grabs Wright up and there is no feeling like before, when she’d come back from Slipstream. None of that discomfort, that unhollowing. It’s just like they were never apart at all. It is Lena and Wright, like it’s always been, except-

Wright tucks himself up in Lena’s sleeve, and she can feel the too-fast drum of his heart against the pulsepoint on her wrist. Can feel his panic, this abject terror butting up against her own. Lena makes sure there’s no one else in the hall before sinking to the ground, Wright bundled close as he can be. Lena’s chest pulls, as she sits, upset at her straining it, and she winces. Wright says, almost _affronted, "_ D’you hurt yourself somehow? I feel- sore.”

Lena tries to catch her breath. “Yeah. Pulled a stitch, I think.”

Wright chirrups his displeasure.“You’re away from me for one _second_ ,” he says, and that- it sinks in.

Lena was further away from Wright than anyone should ever be able to be, from their daemon. And they’re fine. They’re okay. They’re together again and nothing seems wrong, at all. They’re-

Lena reaches into her sleeve to rub at the feathers of Wright’s throat, soft-blue. “What _are_ we?” she says.

* * *

Wright settles when Lena was still pretty young.

A lot of daemons in their generation do- it’s pretty common, in wartime. In Lena’s neighborhood, in her city, with Omnium agents spreading their roots out, first, through the parts of town people don’t care so much about defending.

Through Lena’s parts of town.

She is coming home from school, one afternoon, Wright draped as a cat over her shoulders, basking in a rare sunny day. He’s making Lena warm and sleepy by proxy, and she steps off the bus, muffles a huge yawn.

“Would you stop it?” Lena complains. “You’re puttin’ me to sleep.”

Wright kneads her shoulder with pin-sharp claws.

“Oi- hey!” Lena says, and is reaching up to swat at him when the bus, by now a block away, topples onto its side with this noise like thunder. Lena _feels_ it, in the bottoms of her feet. Feels it in her teeth.

There is an omnic- one of the military models, its single eye a vibrant red. It’s standing by the bus, arms still upraised, and Lena thinks of the Greek myths they’re reading in class. Thinks of cyclopses, looking at the omic’s eerie red eye. Thinks of _monsters_. Thinks, mostly, about the brave heroes who best them, over and over. Who _help_ people.

Lena takes a step- two- towards the omnic. It’s a block away, but she _knows_ people on that bus; that lady who works at the corner store has climbed halfway out of one of the windows, and there’s _blood_ running down her temple, all matted in her hair. Lena can't quite remember her name. 

It's-

Something goes cold in the back of Lena’s throat. She doesn’t _feel_ afraid, but she’s shivering, all over, like she’s sick. She takes another step, and there’s a tug at her ankle- Wright has his teeth fixed in her pant-leg, dog-shaped, all of his feet planted.

“Wright-” Lena says, her voice sounding far off, somehow, to her own ears.

“What’re _we_ gonna do?” he says, muffled around her pants.

They’re 10 years old. Lena feels this anger burn up her back- the sort of helpless, _I would do more if I was bigger and older and stronger_ anger. “We could _try_ ,” she says, and Wright tugs at her, again, a growl in the back of his throat. Lena’s eyes sting.

“Try _what?_ ” he says. “Lena, I _want_ to-”

Lena wishes she wasn’t 10 years old. Wishes she wasn’t the smallest person in her grade (well- except Leo, but they skipped a grade, so that doesn’t count). She balls up her fists, drags Wright forward a half-step-

There is a wall of sound, from the bus. Louder even than when it flipped, and Lena looks to see the Omnic has done- _something_ , and the bus _erupts_ into flame and smoke, like something from an action movie, all that fire in the middle of a London street. Except…

Except it’s real. _Too_ real, realer than anything Lena’s ever seen, maybe, the heat rushing up the street towards her, the omnic outlined black against the fire it started, this rain of debris coming down like hail.

Wright’s teeth unclamp from Lena’s leg, sudden, and Lena staggers, all her forward momentum taking her to her hands and knees. There are bits of metal, bus-scrap, on the pavement that cut up her palms- all the way _here_ , and Lena looks up, helpless, at the bus. At the space where the bus had been, her hands shaking like she’s never seen her hands shake, before. Her ears ring.

Wright noses her upright, still that dog, and then flickers into a bird- something tiny, so he can tuck himself into the dip of Lena’s shoulder and say, “Lena, let’s go, we need to _go_.”

Lena runs, her legs all wobbly under her, Wright this barely-there weight on her shoulder.

* * *

 

Her mum fusses all evening, and then she starts crying, which is dumb, ‘cause Lena isn’t even crying, and which is scary, ‘cause Lena’s mum _never_ cries. Wright gets all wrapped up in Noah, her mum’s daemon, who’s grooming him with his clever, otter’s paws. It’s soothing, usually, but now it’s just making Lena feel like she’s being yanked in two directions at once.

Lena’s mum pulls her into a hug, in the middle of their tiny kitchen, dinner cooking on the stove behind them. She says, “thank _God_ ,” her arms really tight around Lena’s skinny shoulders.

Lena _does_ start to cry, then, with her mum pressing a gentle kiss into her hair, Lena’s hands still all cut-up and stinging from debris, her ears still ringing.

* * *

“You couldn’t have chosen something _bigger_?” Lena says, a week later.

It’s sunk in- that he’s _staying_ like this. A kid with his daemon badger-shaped shoves Lena over in the playground, and Lena expects Wright to turn into something big, to chase him off, or something weird, to scare him off.

But- of course, he’s never going to do that. Not ever again.

Wright’s perched on the faucet while Lena washes the dirt off her face, skin all tenderized from hitting the ground. He puffs out his throat, and the feathers go oily-blue where the lights hit.

Lena sighs, feels his hurt-feelings like a toothache, through their connection.

“We didn’t have to _both_ be shrimps, is all,” she says, and wipes her hands off. Reaches to lift Wright up.

Those weird, shiny feathers at his throat are softer than they look. Lena keeps expecting them to be hard, metaley, but she runs her thumb gently through them and it’s just down, like the rest of him. Nothing all all to protect him from the world.

 _Except me_ , Lena thinks.

* * *

The next time she gets in a fight, it’s the same kid (and okay, _maybe_ Lena started it this time, but the Spice Girls Hologram Reunion Tour _isn’t_ a bad idea, it’s going to be _awesome_ , and if this guy can’t see that then-)

His daemon, a chimp today, gets fed up with Lena’s arguing. Makes a grab for Wright. Lena breaks off mid-sentence to watch it happen, those strong, leathery fingers snatching at little Wright. She hops a step forward, but she can’t intervene, obviously- she doesn’t want to touch the chimp, by accident. Just braces for the slimy, hurt-feeling she knows is coming, shoulders hunching up.

Except Wright’s too quick to be grabbed. He ducks the chimp’s hand and flies circles around her head, says “ _too slow!_ ” in the high, obnoxious pitch of his voice.

It makes Lena laugh, and the guy she’d been fighting with goes sort of purple, mutters, “whatever. Keep your dumb band.” He turns to stalk away, chimp knuckling after him. Lena makes sure to laugh ‘till they’re out of earshot.

Wright flits up to Lena’s eye-level. His eyelids blinking sideways, his head all shiny-blue in the sun. Lena grins.

It’s easy, after that. The two of then run circles around fights, and on the rare occasion something can’t be outrun, they turn on their heels and laugh in its face. It’s easy to win, that way. Even if they get knocked down, no one can say Lena _lost_ , not _really_ , when she’s laughing at the end, blood lining her teeth and Wright this bright, cheerful flicker in the air around her.

But- you know. There’s running from a guy Wright pisses off in Basic, his beagle daemon baying after them, spine-chilling, as Lena outpaces- easily- the beagle’s big, tough soldier.

And there’s laughing in that same soldier’s face, in the mess hall at dinner, him towering over Lena and screaming himself blue and Lena going, “oh, ‘sat right?” and giggling over that lick of fear in her chest, watching the guy get all wound up; making himself look like an idiot, in front of everyone, hollering while Lena laughs into her dinner, Wright’s bright piping giggle alongside.

But-

How do you _outrun_ something like Slipstream?

How do you outpace this:

They're up at 40 thousand feet, and the guy on the radio says, “All clear, Tracer,”

And Lena takes a breath, this electric thrill in her chest. ‘Cause this? This is what she’s good at. Really, _really_ good, the air low-atmos gray outside, lights all green across the board.

Lena dials in her co-ordinates, punches the button to teleport. Feels the Slipstream hum to life under her, this whir of machine, of engine, like the plane’s some animal, flesh-and-blood-and-bone all rising to Lena’s touch just like that. Lena looks over at Wright, where he is flying circles of their cockpit, and feels the _thrill_ run through him, too.

Later, she’ll wonder if it’s maybe something _she_ did wrong. Some mismatch of coordinates. But- no. If there’s one thing she’s _ever_ been good at, it’s this. It’s _flying_.

Still- her mistake or not, the dash lights go red, all of a sudden, just as the Slipstream starts to teleport, this sudden racket of warning noise filling up the cockpit. Lena reaches to abort but too late, too late-

There’s this- tearing sensation, right below Lena’s breastbone. This nauseous, unreality feeling. Like when Lena was in bed with a fever, as a kid, sweating out half her body weight and having weird, headache-dreams.

She wakes up, eventually, in this country villa somewhere in the middle of nowhere. A guy and his plowhorse daemon are walking up the middle of a dry-dust road, some anachronism about them. Peasant clothes, like they’re coming home from a ren faire.

And there’s this horrible- this _hollow_ feeling, dull in Lena’s chest, way down where she can’t reach it, under skin and muscle and bones. She’s- lightheaded. Like she’s missing something- down a few iron levels, or something.

Wright is nowhere to be seen.

Lena is alone- alone the way no one ever is, not _really_.

It's a weight, of sorts. Lena thinks of the old stories about Atlas, the weight of the world bearing down on his shoulders and him divine, no daemon to share the load.

She gets it, now. Why that sort of thing might drive someone a little crazy.

It takes her a while, pasts and presents and alternate realities all spinning themselves out all around her, to realize they’re not just fever dreams. It’s  _time travel_. And it’s really happening.

Which means there’s really that empty space in her. That loneliness like a pit where her heart should be. That Wright really is nowhere, _nowhere_ at all.

They find each other again, eventually.

But how do you run from _that_?

* * *

 

And-

And when you find out you and your daemon are maybe-kind-of-but-not-all-the-way severed; how do you laugh at _that_? How do you make _that_ look silly?

Lena _tries-_ they both try.

Angela visits- well, visit is a nice word for it. She comes to check up on Lena, rumpled white coat like always, big dark circles under her eyes like always. Her daemon blends nearly into her lab coat, snowy-white with these big bands of brown, and Lena’s not- _not_ glad to see them. The’re nice!

But.

But, ugh, she’s not gonna lie to her _doctor_ , and after Angela checks the drain in Lena’s chest, makes sure nothing’s infected, changes out the bandage-

After all that, she says, _“_ is there anything else you need?”

And Lena stares at the chipped paint over the light switch, at the H&S poster, at Tiressais with his wings all folded up on Angela’s knee. Wright digs the tiny, ineffectual points of his feet into Lena’s bare forearm.

“Well,” Lena says, and explains.

Angela goes this funny, news-print shade of gray. Her knuckles are white, balled up on her thighs.

Lena says, “hey, though- it’s not all bad! I mean- if I get hungry, now I can just send Wright out to grab a bite for me. Don’t even need to get off the sofa!”

Wright pipes up, “oh, sure, I’ll bring you back _one chip_ at a time.” Flutters his tiny wings for emphasis.

Angela smiles, but it’s more of an I’m-uncomfortable smile than anything else. “Well, I’m glad you two are-” she clears her throat, and her daemon unfolds his feather-soft wings, brushes one against Angela’s wrist. “I’m glad you two are feeling well, considering. Your chest is healing admirably. And-” she fidgets, for a moment. “And, should you wish to discuss- this new development, then- my college, Winston, may be-”

Lena shakes her head. “We’re alright, doc.”

“A little bored,” Wright pipes up.

“Right.” Lena grins. Feels it go a bit plasticy at the edges, but oh well. “Lookin’ forward to getting some fresh air, is all. I’ve gone even pastier than usual.”

Angela leaves them with the usual tired slouch ironed right out of her spine; back straight, shoulders high and tense.

* * *

They test it- of course they do. Three days later, Lena and Wright walk to the very end of the base, out of the hospital doors and into the wider Overwatch facility. Soldiers walk by in packs, all these young people with their wartime daemons, wolves and hawks and big cats.

There were a lot of predators in Lena’s neighborhood, in her generation. She saw a lot of daemons settle as badgers, meerkats. Burrowers were common, where she grew up.

 _All the better to hole up with you, my dear_ , Lena’s best friend had said, in the last days before his daemon settled; you could tell she was thinking about it, though. Going from wolf to fox and back again.

No one takes much notice of them, Lena in street clothes, Wright un-military on her shoulder.

A group of women walk past, their canine daemons snapping at each other as they bicker, teasing and shoving at one another in their bright-blue overwatch fatigues. Their laughter is loud, easy. Their steps fall in time. Lena’s teeth ache- her throat aches, right down to the surgical tape. She misses, briefly, _violently_ , the company of other pilots. That easy, that thoughtless camaraderie, that-

Wright butts against the side of her jaw. Makes this low, soothing sound. Lena keeps walking.

They end up in some back hallway, a _caution, wet floor_ sign propped up on the dry tile. Clearly not a heavy-traffic area. Wright hops from Lena’s shoulder to perch on the sign, blue-and-green against the eyesore yellow.

And Lena- hesitates. Reaches out for him, a last time, and musses up his feathers so he chirps at her, indignant. Lena can feel the out-of-place discomfort of it ‘till he smoothes the feathers back down (“Real mature, Lena!”), and it’s a reassurance. A reminder that their connection survives, for the most part, intact.

“Go on,” Wright says. Lena hesitates a moment more but- after all, they are restless creatures, the two of them. Curious. So Lena walks west.

She _does_ get looks, this time. Feels eyes bounce from her heels to her shoulders to her hands, these shocky, sideways, _where’s-your-daemon_ looks. Half wants to say, “He’s just talking a load off while I do the walking, the lazy git,” but there are things you joke about, and there’s _this_. Whatever this is.

The daemonless aren’t- unheard of on military bases. They got their safety briefing, in air cadets, from a woman with that conspicuous, empty space by her side, where most of them had bugs, bats, and birds.

There hadn’t been a scar on her, but still- looking at her was like looking at a woman flayed open for autopsy. There'd been something _wrong_ about her, half-dead. They’d used her for effect, of course- try to scare the rowdy new recruits straight. But as transparent as it’d been, it’d worked. So, yeah. There are daemonless on base, Lena’s sure, but it’s not- but it’s not _normal._ There's no getting used to it.

Those three women Lena had passed, with the canine daemons, all conspicuously stop laughing when they catch Lena’s eye. This sudden quiet.

Lena shivers. Puts her hand to her chest and feels the metal of the anchor. Startling, still, alien, but below it; sternum, breastbone, and still below, the bright spark that connects her to Wright.

She can feel- dull, but there, when she looks for it- Wright’s flicker of panic, his buried, desperate loneliness. _Him_ , still there, when she searches.

“You’re alright,” Lena tells him, and feels some whisper of reply, too distant to make out. That connection- that little thread between them- does not thin any further.

When Lena is back in the hospital wing, halfway through to the other side, there is a painful jerk in her chest. Something like heartburn.

Lena stops. Takes another step, and the pain gets worse. A familiar pain for _anyone_ , the tug of a daemon too far away for comfort.

Lena’s third step, her last, wrings the breath right out of her. This vice-tightness, the _shocking_ pain of it. The tug on their bond.

“ _Wright_ ,” she says, and goes to her knees without conscious thought, relief all through her. It’s- they’re not severed, then. Not really, it’s just... stretched. The bond between them. It’s still there. It can still hurt them, which means-

Which means it is not lost.

* * *

That night, Lena stands in front of her bathroom mirror, shirt off, Wright perched in her hair. Making a nest there, like he hasn’t done since they were kids. The anchor sits, anachronistic, in the centre of Lena’s chest, ringed by purple-pink scar tissue.

“Hmm,” Lena says.

“You could make it work,” Wright tells her. “Make it fashionable, yeah? Add some silver to your wardrobe.”

His voice falls a little flat, the joke going off like sour milk. Lena thinks she can still feel the phantom ache of their distance, earlier, but it’s almost certainly from the surgery site. She looks at the anchor, blue and chrome and alien, plugging a hole right through her chest, and thinks, distantly, _that can’t be me_.

She’ll get used to it, eventually, but for now- for now it is this Thing that is not a part of her. Cold metal and a steady, blue light where there should be only Lena’s skin, unbroken.

She thinks, again: _what are we?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrow another chapter. This time from lena's perspective!  
> Also Ana cameo! Strongly considering a fic w her, gabe, & jack in this universe b/c i've just been on an angst kick, I guess? Plus i love team "Faked my own death & all I got was this lousy T-Shirt"  
> (Ana's Daemon, Kamilah, is a [spotted hyena](https://onekindplanet.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/iStock-147270142-1-wpcf_326x300.jpg) ) (She was almost a lion (fr the Aesthetic) or a [striped hyena](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/1-striped-hyena-hyaena-hyaena-panoramic-images.jpg) bc they're known to play dead & that's very funny to me, for ana.)  
> Anyway concrit, tumblr, etc. thanks for reading!


	4. Lena

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, basic math says Lena would be 19 at this point in the lore but like. that can't be right.

So they go to see Winston. Like Angela’d said.

His workshop is in the basement- cavelike, it takes a moment for Lena’s eyes to adjust. The room is like a magic-eye puzzle; a riot of shape and clutter that takes a moment to resolve as Winston, hunched over between tables overflowing with scrap. He’s reading one of those useless pictogram instruction sheets, a case of allen keys open on his desk, and frowning down at his workbench, brow creased up like an old newspaper.

Lena clears her throat. Knocks on the door frame.

Winston turns, knocking the half-assembled whatever-it-is from his desk. He catches it with his _foot_ . Lena thinks, _this dude’s really a gorilla, huh?_

Wright, on her shoulder, goes sort of stiff, and says, low, “Lena, he’s-”

Winston swings out of his chair, starts loping towards them. His footsteps make this unmistakeable, leathery, _gorilla_ sound. “Cadet Oxton,” he says, voice low and polite.

Lena pulls a face. “Er- Lena’s fine.”

She doesn’t mind her bosses calling her _Cadet_ , but she’s not sure where Winston is in the pecking order, and having a one-tonne gorilla pulling rank on her is- weird.

“Lena, then.” Winston nods. “Is everything alright with the anchor?”

“Hm?” Lena looks down at the faint, blue light of the anchor, bleeding through her shirt. “Oh, right as rain, thanks! We just uh- had a few questions.”

Wright butts Lena in the jaw, like he used to when she’d get shirty with the higher-ups. Lena feels herself straighten up on reflex. “Oh- and, er, thanks for all this.” Lena raps a hand on the anchor. “And nice to properly meet you! You know, while I’m not all-”

She makes a vague hand gesture that hopefully suggests, at least a little, _time traveling against my will,_ or, _trapped in a hospital room by, again, the time travel_.

Winston nods, and so Lena puts out her hand to shake.

He hesitates. Looks- weirdly- up at Wright, who nods. It makes Lena’s skin prickle- this feeling just left of jealousy. Who’s this guy think he is, having a private conversation with _her_ daemon?

But then Winston- smiles? What passes for a smile, in a gorilla. His inch-long teeth show, yellow, over black gums. He shakes Lena’s hand- skin soft and dry, like fine leather.

“Of course.” He says. “I’m only glad we could help.”

At Winston’s touch, something _tugs_ in Lena’s chest- just below her sternum, the place she associates with Wright and, more recently, with the anchor. It’s heartburn, maybe. Some mild discomfort. Except- Lena can _feel_ Wright’s unease, like an itch somewhere she can’t quite reach. It’s putting her on edge.

“Uh,” Winston says, after a moment. “There was something you wanted to ask me?”

“Yes,” Wright says. Lena gives him a hairy eyeball.

Winston looks intrigued. “Er,” Lena says. “Yeah. y’see- Wright and I. The Slipstream thing- it did some sorta weirdness to our connection- Dr. Zeigler said t’ask you about it?” She forces a laugh. “Pawning the work off on you, I s’pose! I can always go, and just _tell_ her you gave great advice, if you’re busy.”

But Winston’s frowning. Lena notices, for the first time, the square math-teacher glasses perched on his nose. “Hmm,” he says. “That isn’t- entirely unexpected, but...”

“Right.” Lena says. “Weird for us, too.”

* * *

 

They talk for an hour. Lena tells him what’s- well. What’s _wrong_ , with her and Wright. Tells him, when he asks, how it feels, when it started. Wright chimes in with his own notes, time to time.

Winston’s frown gets deeper and deeper. He takes off his glasses, at one point, to rub the bridge of his squashed-in nose.

His desk chair is one of those enormous, ergonomic things- way more seat than most people’d need, but Winston’s built on a whole ‘nother scale. Lena’s perched on a crate, for her part. Winston’d assured her it was safe, but Lena’s pretty sure she can hear whatever’s inside… ticking.

“I can still feel him, and all,” Lena says. “Just, when we’re apart, it gets- er.” She looks down at Wright.

“Muted?” He offers. He’s been hopping up and down her thigh the whole conversation, still uneasy for reasons Lena can’t parse. She’s got this feeling he wants to tell her something- keeps shooting looks at Winston, as if to judge if he’ll overhear.

Winston grunts. He’s got some bit of metal and wire in his hands that sometimes winks over at Lena, when it catches the light. “Sounds like textbook severing to me,” He says.

Lena feels the bottom drop out of her gut- feels like someone’s yanked out a jenga piece they shouldn't have and she’s in free-fall, just seconds away from hitting ground, from the calamitous noise she’ll make when she gets there. _Severing_. It’s so- medieval torture. The stuff of gory history.

Winston seems unaware of the destabilizing he has done to them. “Dulled connection, increased range- but you say it’s only when you’re apart?”

Lena tries to swallow enough panic to reply all cool and level, but Wright gets there first. “That’s right,” he says. “When we’re close- business as usual!”

“Hmm,” Winston says. “I’ve never _heard_ of a partial severing. But it’s certainly possible, I suppose.”

There’s something about the way he says it. Lena meets Winston’s eyes. And maybe it’s because Wright’s uneasy that she gets a bad feeling, but it’s there; that instinct you get, in her neighborhood, in her generation, that says: _brace yourself. There’s bad news coming._

Lena says, “How d’you know all this, anyway?” Wants to rip off the bandaid.

“I-” Winston looks at Wright, again. Lena looks, too- Wright’s got his feathers all pulled in tight- wilted, like he wants to seem even smaller than he is. “I suppose you’ll tell her eventually?” Winston says.

Wright looks up. Blinks his sideways blink. “I,” he says, sounding torn. He’s never kept a secret from Lena, not _ever_ , but they meet this _gorilla_ and suddenly he’s not sure? It makes Lena feel far-away, from him, and there’d been enough of that, lately. “I can’t _lie_ to her,” he says, eventually.

Winston grunts. Takes a breath, then: “ _I’m_ severed,” he says.

Lena feels her head snap up to him, can’t stop the way she’s staring. “So you’re- I mean, I’d figured you were a lab experiment, or somethin’, like those old 2010s movies- y’know with the-”

“Planet of the apes,” Winston says, his mouth in a thin line. “Yes, I’m- familiar, with the franchise.”

Lena laughs. “Man- that old CGI, right?”

“I’m not much of a fan either.” Winston’s voice is low. There’s a question Lena doesn’t want to ask, but can’t see a way around.

“So,” she says. “If you’re a daemon, then where’s-”

Winston’s massive shoulders drop. He puts down the whatever-it-is he’s been tinkering with. “Dead,” he says, in a voice very soft, very quiet for a 1-tonne gorilla. “He’s, uh-” Winston clears his throat. “He’s dead.”

“Is that- possible?” Lena blurts, and regrets it instantly. “I mean-”

“It’s possible,” Winston says. “So is teleportation. Time travel-”

“I get your point,” Lena says. Still. A daemon without their person; it was the stuff of horror stories. There were lots of spine-chillers about the ghosts of daemons, left behind to see to their human’s unfinished business. But it never- it _never_ happened. People without daemons- it was rare, and freaky. But it happened. Daemons without people-

Impossible. Lena had thought.

“Huh,” She says, instead of all that. At least it explained why Wright had been so agitated. “But Wright and I-”

Winston gives this landslide shrug of his shoulders. I’m not an expert,” he says. “Not my specialty. But I- _think_ that if something were going to happen…”

“It woulda happened already?” Lena guesses. Winston bobs his head.

They talk a little longer, but Lena’s not really paying attention, ears ringing. Can’t stop thinking what would happen to Wright, if she flickered out again. If he’d just be- left behind, like Winston is.

Alone.

There’s no either of them, not really. Not without each other.

When she starts to leave, Lena hesitates, in the door. Turns to look back at Winston. He has, watching them go, this horrible- this lonely look in his eye. Hungry, almost. Wright shivers. Presses closer to Lena, and she lifts a hand to him, unthinking.

Winston turns away from the display of affection, shoulders hunching, and Lena hurries out of the room, something queasy biting at her stomach.

* * *

That night, Lena’s brushing her teeth in the aggressive white of her little bathroom, all the furniture weirdly far-apart to allow for wheelchairs, IV stands. This place- it doesn’t let her forget even for a second that she is in a hospital. Lena rinses and spits, looks down at Wright perched neatly on the faucet. The metal throws back light, makes his feathers gleam. Lena can _still_ feel his unease, second-hand.

“We gotta go back,” Lena says, eventually.

Wright tucks his wings tighter to his sides.

“Aw- c’mon, don't be like that.” Lena rubs at his head. “Come on, pipsqueak. We owe the guy. And he can’t have many friends.”

Wright sighs. “When you touched him, I felt-” He fluffs out his chest.

“Oh! Sorry, didn’t even think about that.”

Wright shakes his head. “No- it _wasn’t_ like you were touching another daemon. I felt-”

Lena frowns. Feels a spike of _fear_ from Wright, clear as day. _Not severed_ , she thinks. _Not us_.

“I didn't feel _anything_ ,” is what Wright settles on. “He’s- alone. There was- _nothing_.”

Lena remembers that yawning, bottomless-pit loneliness, when she was trapped out of time. “Yeah,” she says. Realizes the faucet’s been running their whole conversation. Twists it off. “ ‘s why we gotta go see him again, though, innit? How’d you feel if-”

“Okay!” Wright blurts. Shakes his head. “Okay.” He hops the short distance from the sink to Lena’s hand. “Just- don’t.  I don’t wanna think about that.”

* * *

Angela tells them that Winston likes cards. That he's not very busy, at the moment. That he'd probably like a visit, from the two of them.

* * *

"Cadet- uh, Lena!" Winston looks up from his workbench. His glasses are crooked. Lena wonders if he like- ever _leaves_ that workbench, 'cause every time she sees him he's here, tinkering with something or other. It looks like leather, today, some mess of belts in his huge hands.

"Workin' on a final fantasy costume, love?"

Winston looks blankly at Lena, where she's waiting in the doorway.

"Never mind. Can I come in?"

(Later, when Overwatch has been pulled out from its own carcass like one of those spiders that eat their own mums- when Overwatch comes back scrappy, smaller, a little cannibalistic, Lena will make a similar joke. One of their new recruits will give her a sharp grin and, seeming young in a way Lena imagines she never did, enthuse about the way the newest game (number 34, part 2) calls back to earlier arcs, how she's planning to play it all through on a charity stream, how-)

Winston grunts. "Please," he says, swinging himself upright to lope over to a chair, sweep a pile of debris from the seat to give Lena some room. "Can I help you with anything?"

"Sure can," Lena says. "I'm itchin' to play a game of cards. You know Gin?"

Winston blinks. "Yes," he says. "Why?"

"Gettin' bored!" Lena says. Wright pipes up,

"It's true- she's been insufferable-"

And Lena swats at him, Wright taking wing to avoid her.

"Alright then," Winston says, slowly. "Your deal?"

* * *

 

Lena loses- badly, and not on purpose. She supposes "winning at cards" is part of the whole super-genius-science-ape thing.

"That," Wright says, cheerily, "or you're just rubbish at cards."

"Oi!" Lena says, "I didn't see you helping, you brat!"

Winston laughs, watching the two of them. Invites them back next week.

* * *

Lena learns:

All of Winston's stuff is that soft, weird-shaped, ergonomic stuff they make for old people. The world's not really built for someone like him, Lena thinks, watching Winston's stubby, gorilla's fingers very gingerly holding a fan full of extra-large, easy-reading playing cards. He just doesn’t _fit_ , the way most people do.

* * *

He's from the moon. She is friends with a Gorilla (technically a daemon, but like, A Gorilla,) from the _moon_.

He tells her that and she says, “Not quite planet of the apes then, hey? What’s the moon-?”

“A moon,” Winston says, helpfully, a laugh buried low in his grumbly voice.

“Well, alright-” Lena says, like, she knew _that_ , and Wright bursts out with a high, piping laugh.

“You dunce,” he says, fondly, rubbing his head against the mead of her hand. “Moon of the apes. Christ.”

Winston’s giving them this surprised look Lena sees on him, sometimes. Like he’s not quite sure why they’re there. Like he can’t quite believe they keep coming back.

“Your deal, big guy!” Lena says, changing topics with all the tact of a bulldozer.

Wright says, quietly, “ ‘A Moon’. _Come on_ , Lena.” and Winston laughs, scooping up his cards.

* * *

And he's got this funny, hooting laugh- slaps down three aces, one day,  and when Lena groans he _hoots_ , all those huge gorilla teeth flashing.  Lena realizes only then she'd halfway forgotten he wasn't human

* * *

He's a little farsighted- on more than one occasion, Lena's seen Winston, with his glasses pushed up on his forehead, squint to read something, and Lena wants to say, "put your glasses back on," and she wants to laugh, but mostly-

Mostly, she recommends a book, to him, this god-awful 1990s romance about time travel, and the next time she sees him he's got his glasses in one hand and a paper- an honest to god, _paper_ copy- of the book in the other. His face is all screwed up, trying to read it, like an old man trying to read the newspaper, and Lena feels this squeeze of affection.

Wright flutters to perch on Winston's hand- the first time they've touched, and he pecks at Winston's glasses, says, "your face is gonna stick like that, big guy."

Lena doesn't really know how much daemons can feel, from one another, but she hopes Winston feels how fond they are, of him.

* * *

 

Angela says, one Friday night, “You don't have to do this, you know."

They're doing pizza and an old 2010s movie- one of those half-goofy, CGI-heavy action thrillers that were apparently everywhere back then.

Lena blinks. "I know the movie wasn't my first choice, but you don't have to talk about it like I'm goin' to war or something."

Angela frowns. She has this truly weaponizable frown, the platonic ideal of "I'm-not-mad-I'm-disappointed".

" _What?_ " Wright says.

"Winston." Angela says, her accent curling up the consonants of his name. "You are not... you do not owe us a debt, Lena. You do not _have_ to try and make him happy."

Lena snorts. "The pizza’s gettin' cold-"

But Wright says, "and you do?"

Angela grimaces. Tiressais turns his blank, unreadable face on Wright, on the both of them- there is something eerie about him, Lena thinks. Something spooky.

"Winston and I are friends," Angela says, and Tiressais says,

"He was so alone when he got here. I could sense it a mile away. He has- he _had_ \- no one. You could not understand what that feels like."

Lena thinks of being between-times, unable to talk to anyone, to be heard by anyone, Wright this hole in her chest, and says, "I got some idea."

Angela frowns again. Lena changes tracks.

"'Sides! I like the big guy. Even if he keeps beatin' us at cards."

“Beating _you_ ,” Wright says.

Angela smiles. "In that case, let us not keep _our_ friend waiting."

And it's- it's not that Lena didn't know this, about the two of them. About Angela and Tiressais. But it's the first time they've basically said it outright; that they think it's like- their job, to fix people.

Lena says as much, to Wright, sometime later. He musses up a chunk of her hair, beak ticklish against her scalp. " _help_ people," he says. "And- glass houses, hey?"

"Right." Lena says, 'cause. It's not like she's any better. Not like Winston's any better, either, and she likes him well enough. It's why they get along, the three of them, despite huge gulfs in age and circumstance.

And they're _all_ like that, here.

All of them at Overwatch- the inner circle, at least, all of them she's met; they're the real deal. Capital-H Heroes just like the TV said, and Lena's never quite sure what to do with that.

With sitting around the card table, or in front of a movie screen, eating chips and chatting with people who would do- and _have done_ \- anything, absolutely anything, to make the world a better place.

It makes her wanna make something of herself- lights that fire in her she thought went out with the Slipstream.

Most days, she's just pretty sure she's gonna _miss_ it.

* * *

And she’s gonna _miss_ it because she’s getting better. Angela has her doing stretches- no need to be so careful about the surgery site, now, no risk of pulling stitches. It still twinges, and the scars are still raw pink, but the drains are out.

She’s stable- no temporal flickers, no changes with her and Wright, she is only healing. Only getting better.

Lena gets her rest, and she does her exercises. Regains range of motion in her arms. Laughs, anyway, till her chest hurts, playing cards with Winston. Breaking through Angela’s shy shell. It’s not the kinda hurt that worries her.

Except that once she’s better, they’ll boot her out.

And for the first time since she was a kid in the SSC, she has absolutely no idea where she’s going next.

* * *

 

She pitches this idea to Angela, one morning. Breakfast in the cafeteria, the riot of Overwatch all around them. Lena’s gotten used to it- the colourful cast of characters, the constant bickering, the racket of daemons and people fighting and teasing. It’s the sort of big family Lena never had- it’s what she imagines it’d be like, anyway. Everyone in so much love with everyone else they’re always at each other’s throats.

This rigid, blonde man she knows from the posters- Commander Jack Morrison, leader of the whole damn thing- slouches by their table in his pajamas. He has his initials monogrammed on the pocket of his bathrobe.

“Morning, Angela,” he says around a yawn. His daemon, this black-and-tan dog that screams Military to Lena from her neat fur to her pointed ears, dances sideways from Commander Morrison. Grabs a bit of bacon off the plate of someone Lena only half-recognizes, this handsome American with a toque hanging off the back of his head.

Angela, watching them, smiles. “Good morning, Jack,” she says. Redirects to Lena once he’s gone past.

“You were saying something?” She says.

“Oh,” Lena says. “Just ah- wonderin’ when I’ll be outta here, is all.”

Angela laughs. “You must be impatient to stretch your legs.”

And the thing is- Lena _had_ been, but she doesn’t really know _where_ she’ll be stretching her legs. And she’s- once she’d gotten over the shock of Commander-Morrison-From The-News in his pajamas, and that guy who only wears cowboy clothes, and... all the rest of it- well. She hasn’t been so eager to leave for a while.

“Right,” is what she says. “No, I just- gotta plan some, yeah? Figure what I’ll be doing once I’m gone.”

“Oh.” Angela nods. “Yes, I suppose you wouldn’t still want to be a pilot.”

Lena shrugs. “I’m thinkin’ about it,” she says. It’s pretty much all she thinks about- all her and Wright talk about, when they’re alone.

But they’re no closer to an answer.

“I’ll send you a timeline, then.” Angela says. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

* * *

A week and change later, Wright and Lena are cleared to go off base, and they’re exactly as close to figuring out what to do next as they had been the day of the surgery.

(Not very.)

Angela volunteers to drive Lena out of the city- “get you your cup of coffee?” she says.

Lena’d forgotten all about that- about being trapped only in the hospital room and having this weirdly vivid urge to go find a shitty coffee place, just to get out and buy a drink and sit down somewhere that didn’t smell like bleach. Her chest hurts, a little, that Angela'd remembered that, when Lena herself had all but forgotten.

“Sure, doc,” she says. “Sounds good.”

* * *

So. They drive out, away from the base, no real destination in mind. It’s more of an excuse, Lena thinks, for Angela to keep an eye on her than anything else. They don’t talk much, as they drive, highway-side reststops blurring past.

Lena misses the UK, a little, as she stares out the window of Angela’s old beater. Switzerland is nice, but it’s coming on to winter. Lena’s breath fogs up the glass, and she misses temperate weather, fog. Missing complaining about the rain.

They stop to recharge the car at one of those little rest stops, complete with tacky T-shirts and that ubiquitous and inexplicable cooler full of strange flavours of fudge. Lena goes in to poke around, sees a serve-yourself coffee counter in the back of the room.

It smells more like tar than like coffee. Lena remembers the alleged purpose of their trip, smiles. Walks over to pour herself a cup.

She reaches up, to grab a lid where they’re set inconveniently high on a shelf, and the still-healing scars around the anchor _pull_ , her affronted muscles crying out that they’ve had a hole carved right through them.

This far from any hospital, the pain means only, to Lena, _you are here, you lived, you are present and solid and the thing that happened to you will not happen again._ It is a reminder- grounding even as it makes her wince away without a lid, the strain more than she wants to manage. She starts, inexplicably, to cry, the air smelling not at all of antiseptic, the store cluttered and messy and unmilitary around her.

Wright knocks a lid off the shelf, for her, and then perches on her shoulder to press the soft dome of his head up against her jaw. “We’re okay,” he says, his little voice shaking.

“We’re okay,” Lena echoes back.

They are.

Lena dumps an affronting amount of sugar into her drink, fixes the lid firmly overtop. Stands there at the counter till her breath comes out even. She’s sure her eyes are a red mess, but it’s not a sad kind of crying, really. Relief, maybe. Catharsis, maybe.

She can’t remember the last time she cried like this.

They’re okay.

* * *

Outside, Lena sits next to Angela on the curb, autumn curling the leaves up all around them, bringing white fog off Lena’s breath. She takes a sip of her coffee- way too hot- for the way it makes her next breath billow out into the afternoon. It’s one of those clear, crisp days, the sky cloudless-blue overhead, the air so crisp Lena thinks you could break it right in two. 

“How is your drink?” Angela says.

The coffee has the consistency of tar. It may have been in that thermos for fucking- for _months_ , for how burnt it tastes. Lena takes a deep breath of air, no hospital-smell at all.

“You know?” She says. “It’s bloody _delicious_.”

Angela smiles. They sit in silence, for a while, and it makes Lena a little itchy. She bounces her knee until Wright- perched up on her thigh- lifts into the air, irritated, and finds a more stable spot.

“If I may ask,” Angela says.

Lena nods.

“Why did you become a pilot?”

It’s a bit outta the blue, but. What else is she doing?

Lena thinks about the torn-up streets of London, that flinch easy in everyone’s reflexes. Thinks about all the funerals she went to, growing up. About her classmates’ daemons settling as things with tough skin, sharp teeth.

And this is the truth: there was not much work, where Lena grew up, but there was the military.

And this is the truth: Lena saw one too many burials, one too many neighbors turned into pleasant, solemn ceremonies and unweathered headstones.

And this is the truth: Lena got _tired_ of the violence, but not in the I’m-giving-up way some people get tired. She got I’ll-put-a-stop-to-this-all-by-myself-if-I-have-to tired.

And maybe she and Wright are small and toothless, for the army, but a pilot can be small, and can have frugivore daemon, and it doesn’t matter, as long as they fit into a cockpit.

Lena thinks about that, and says, “you know those old sci-fi movies? Those blokes that always say, like-” she puts on a bad American accent, baritone- “I can fly anything?”

Angela laughs- a high, clear sound, like bells.

“I always liked their style.” Lena shrugs. That’s true, too, to an extent.

Angela nods. Tiresias says, “What will you do now?” And Angela glances down at him, amused. “Have you thought any more about it?”

Wright fluffs out his wings, glances up at Lena. She nods. “Well.” he says. “Who knows?”

Because here’s the thing-

There was only ever one thing they were going to be. And they had been it already. It never really occurred to Lena to be anything _other_ than a pilot, but now-

Now she and Wright are 19, are only _19_ , and Lena can’t picture going back to the air force, not with memories of Slipstream jumping out at her from every warning light, every engine-sound. She’d heard a forklift backing up, the other day, and almost hurled down the front of her shirt.

Lena looks at Angela, who it seems was born to be a doctor, and thinks, _if you couldn’t be a doctor, what would_ you _be?_

Lena shrugs. “What he said.” Reaches a hand down, for Wright, for the comfort of him. "You got any ideas, we're all ears."

Angela- Angela looks like she’s eaten something foul, but she’s trying to be real polite about it. A little grimace is pulling at her mouth.

“What?” Lena says. 

“Well.” Angela sighs. “Winston. He has been working on an- enhancement, for your anchor.”

Lena tries to swallow her panic with a sip of coffee. “There’s er- nothin’ _wrong_ with the anchor, is there?”

“No!” Angela puts a hand on Lena’s shoulder, looking sorry. “Nothing wrong, it is only-”

She mutters something- Swedish, but Lena gets from the tone (and from the amused flick of Tiresias’s wing) that it’s not polite. “I don’t,” Angela says. “ _Agree_ with Winston, on his front. However, he has pointed out- and rightly so- that it is your decision, in the end.”

Lena forces a laugh. “You’re uh- makin’ me kinda nervous here, doc.” Wright’s lifted off to vent some energy for her, making tight little circles in the air.

“Winston calls it- his invention- the ‘Chronal Accelerator.” Angela shakes her head.

“Very comic-book,” Lena says.

“Yes.” Angela’s hands are folded very neatly in her lap, her posture stiffly perfect. Tiresias, normally so eerie-still he could be pinned to a board in a museum, is restless, folding and unfolding his wings.

“The accelerator,” Angela says, “would attach to your anchor. As I understood it, it would allow you to control your own-”

“To time travel,” Tiresias cuts in. “It is- more complicated than that, but in the basic sense-”

Lena blinks. “ _Why?_ ”

Angela’s mouth flattens. “We- that is, _Winston_ , believes it would- make you an asset to Overwatch. On the field, the accelerator would-”

“Sorry- you wanna _hire_ me?”

“Yes,” Angela says. “But- Lena. Don’t- that is, this wouldn't be without risk. You have already been hurt once, on our behalf, I would not- I would rather not ask this of you. Do not feel you must agree- as I have said, you owe us nothing.”

Part of Lena wants to say, _stuff the risk, where do I sign?_

Because here, suddenly, laid out in front of her, is a neat answer to the question Wright and her have been circling. Here is something to Do, next, something _good_. Lena doesn’t relish violence- she’d rather not hurt anyone, human or omnic. Thinks people are mostly good, really, when they get the chance.

She just wants to help people _have_ that chance. Help people be less scared, less unsafe. Help them be _people_ again. Less daemons with teeth, she thinks. Less with claws. And here Overwatch is, dumping an opportunity to help out right in her lap. Lena _won’t_ have to leave her new friends, _won’t_ have to crawl back home with an honourable discharge and a ‘we’re sorry’ cheque.

But Angela looks _so_ stiff and _so_ uncomfortable. And, Lena’s learned, the thing about offers too good to be true? Well. It’s right there in the name, isn’t it?

So she says, “what’s the catch, then?”

Angela frowns. “The- catch?”

“Well, you’re sittin’ there lookin’ like you’re givin’ me a death sentence-”

“Oh.” Angela sighs. “Yes, I- truthfully, Lena, I’m simply- Let's say I'm not a 'fan' of military operations." She smiles, sorta sad, this hint of 'there's a story to this' in it, but Lena won't pry.  "I don’t believe we should be adding more violence to the world.”

Lena smiles. That, there, is why she wants so badly to stay in Overwatch. People like Angela are why.

“And- besides,” Angela says. Turns the full weight of her gaze on Lena and Wright. “We’ve grown quite fond of you two. I wouldn’t want to see you hurt again- especially not at Overwatch’s hands.”

“Oh-” Lena says, to the sad look in Angela’s eyes. “Oh, doc, if that’s all, then you don’t have to worry. We’re tougher than we look.”

“Right!” Wright puffs out his chest. “And I’m not gonna lose track of this one again, you can put money on that! We’re gonna stay right as rain, together.”

Lena hears, under the boasting, what she’s thinking, too. _I don’t want to lose you again, but this is a chance to do good, real good, and we can’t pass it up_. Feels the lick of fear in Wright, to match her own. _“Not without risk,”_ Angela had said.

Angela just smiles, at that, at their naked bravado, at Wright’s little chest all puffed out in front of him. Lena pulls her into a hug- relief at not having to leave, after all, fondness bubbling up in her, for Angela. For how _worried_ she is, for them.

“I know you’ll do great things with us, Lena.” Angela says, her arms warm around Lena’s shoulders.

But there’s something heavy, about her words. Around them, the autumn day is cold and sharp. A breeze whistles, chilly, up the highway, winter biting early at its heels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow hi im back! I'm still kinda suffering from E3-excitement so I can't really think of anything to say here? 
> 
> oh uh i guess, after this there's only a VERY short epilogue so this fic basically is over. I hope you liked it? con/crit etc, I'm on tumblr at LordSnake where I've only been talking about e3 since e3 started. What new games are you guys excited for?


	5. Epilogue: Emily

In a few short years, of course, Overwatch will collapse in on itself like some great balloon castle deflating; half absurd and half suffocating. 

Lena will be newly a civilian, accelerator and pulse pistols in a box in her closet, three locks deep, with this great big  _ Do Not Touch _ sign on it meant mostly for her. 

She will have a comfortable, hush-money pension from the UN, a flat mostly bare of furniture (but with a perfectly synced-up clock in every room, just- to prove it's all still ticking on the way it's s'posed to), and way too much time on her hands (ha, ha). 

Once spring morning, trying to remember how to be normal, Lena will visit a little cafe ‘round the corner from her place. She will get a coffee, to-go, and when she turns away from the counter there will be a pretty girl, smiling at her; long red hair, a book open on her lap, Lena will see her and think _ , civilian _ . 

Then she will see, resting its head on the woman’s knee, her daemon. A big cat- leopard or cheetah, Lena can never remember the difference. Some animal made to hunt and kill, with its eyes in contended slits, a purr rumbling baritone in its chest. 

A wartime daemon. 

Lena won’t know this, but the woman- Emily- notices her the moment she opens the door, bringing with her a pleasant breeze, the chiming of the door’s bell. Emily will put down her book. 

She thinks Lena’s too- sharp, to be classically pretty, maybe. All angles where women are “supposed” to have curves. But she’s got these thick eyelashes, these shockingly wide, dark eyes-  _ handsome _ , Emily thinks, is maybe a better word. Striking. She likes the way Lena’s eyes sparkle when she says “thanks” for her coffee. Like the pleasant little flip in her stomach, when Lena catches her eye. 

So Emily gives her a smile, on the way out of the door, and Lena pauses. Smiles back. “Haven’t seen you in the shop before,” Lena says.  _ Such a Line, _ Emily thinks.  _ She’s _ a regular. She would have noticed if Lena were, too. 

_ God, she’d have noticed.  _

Instead of saying this- though she considers it for a moment, just to tease- Emily says, “Just got off for the summer.” Wells rumbles out a purr, approving, and Emily flips her book over, so it rests spine-up across her knee. “What about you?”

“Eh- I’m from around here,” Lena says. “But it’s- been a while since I’ve been back.” There’s a beat. Her daemon, some kind of bird, is this bright blur at her side. He gives Emily the impression that Lena’s never still, for long- the impression of a frenetic energy, a drive. 

“I’m Lena, by the way!” Lena says. Her daemon says,

“I’m Wright. Mind if we sit?”

And it would be a bit startling, hearing his voice. It is, maybe, except Wells says, “Wells. Please.” And nods his great head towards the seat across from them. 

Emily gives him a funny look. “Emily,” she says. “Sorry about him.”

The girl- Lena- sits. She’s got this really  _ excellent  _ smile; lights up her whole face. Something in Emily’s chest gives this pleasant squeeze. “No worries. Wright here’s a chatterbox, too, mostly- in’t that right, pipsqueak?”

He squaks, indignant, and Lena turns that 100-watt smile on Emily. 

“So,” she says. “Where’r you from, then?”

Emily takes a sip of her coffee. Feels herself smiling back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, trying to write: "what do people do? do they get coffee? is that what people do?"  
> hey i did say the last chapter would be short. NYWAY! We're all done! I hope you liked this. Doing NaNo next month to stay sharp, so I may be posting more OW fic after that wraps up & I get the chance to edit.   
> Thanks for all your comments & etc!  
> [Oh- And Emily's Daemon, Wells, is a Cheetah!]

**Author's Note:**

> Lena's Daemon, Wright, is a [costa's hummingbird](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Hummingbird.jpg)  
> Mercy's daemon, Tiressais, is a [white witch moth](http://whitewitchwatch.weebly.com/uploads/5/7/4/6/57465959/692342587.jpg)  
> Moira's daemon, Enos, is a [crab eating macaque](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Crab-eating_Macaque.jpg)  
> Torb's daemon, Ida, is a giant amazonian ant. Not including a link b/c like. You know what ants look like. She looks like an ant. 
> 
> I really apologize for just how seriously this thing takes itself but like. Animal Facts! Anyway, Con/Crit is welcome as hell. I'm on Tumblr at lordsnake.tumblr.com. (really please do let me know if there are any big Mistakes in this, i edited it at Tired oclock)


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